It first came as a droplet of blood,
as I worked,
a whisper from within,
a warning I did not want to heed

Then silence,
Pain,
Later, a small, blue form,
fragile as dawn light fading.
I held that little cold hand;
She,
Gendered,
She was to be a woman too.

She had not even breathed enough,
her tiny stillness haunting the doctors,
as if to say, I almost was.

The world should have stopped then,
the sun ashamed to shine.
I cried till breath betrayed me,
till I drowned in my own ribs.

Yet outside,
footsteps danced on pavements,
vendors haggled,
laughter spilled from windows.
How can the earth still spin,
when mine has caved in?

Then dawn had come,
And quite ruthlessly so
a subtle reminder
that life goes on,
So I rose to be a woman,
a mother,
a nurse tending a grown man’s headache,
his pain so small,
mine, endless.

The wind now moves, indifferent,
the sky unmoved, still blue.
Only my soul remembers,
that the world should have paused too.